itch.io

I agree that DDLC was well-written, and that people are going to like things that are well-written better than things that aren't. I'm also not using the word "art" to say that a creative work is necessarily good. There's a lot of bad art out there, and a lot of it's lazy or empty, but a lot of it did involve effort/love/etc even if things didn't work out.

My reason for talking about the reaction I had to DDLC is just, harm is complicated! DDLC was actually really bad for my mental health. I'm not trying to be special, I played the game and then was triggered for days. It is a pretty clear-cut case of being harmed by exposure to a piece of media, and I'm not the only one who had this reaction. But a lot of other mentally ill people liked the game and found it meaningful, and they would be harmed if it was taken away for being harmful to others, and the writer would've been harmed by being prevented from or harassed for telling his story, and any mentally ill people who wanted to create works with similar elements would've been put in a position where they might feel like they had to choose between giving up or dealing with an amount of hostility they may not be equipped to handle, and that's definitely harmful, too. It's a mess, and there's no way to make sure nobody gets hurt. And it seems like you know this, because you're not writing DDLC off for having badly fucked with some people's heads. I don't think you should write it off, it clearly has value to people, but elsewhere in this conversation you're talking about harm as if it's very black and white and it really isn't.

So I'm not a real crazy person because I have different priorities about art? Very cool of you. Can't wait to tell my psychiatrist that I reliably experience emotions and want to live.

DDLC was the most I've ever been upset by a piece of media as an adult, not because the game has onscreen suicide and self-harm but because after that it goes "they're AIs of shitty moe archetypes and the only reason they're this fucked up is that Monika altered their code to make them less likable, so really who cares". Sayori and Yuri being well-written actually makes this worse, because the twist comes after they were already made relatable. It still baffles me that this game isn't universally detested by the mentally ill.

And yet, that game is meaningful to many people who've experienced serious mental illness. Because people get different things out of art, and are not all offended by the same list of writing decisions. This is a part of critical thinking and media literacy, too.

Hi, I am a lifelong mental healther and I'd rather have a million people with no experience with suicidal ideation make a million shitty/lazy/stupid suicide games than have one person who's been there get scared away from making art about their experiences.

I enjoyed this a lot, but I'm also wondering, is there a way to ship all three of them?

I'd like to use this base for a character with a long skirt, but the animations are so fluid and lovely that my lack of knowledge on how to animate things is getting much more in the way than it would with the usual 4-frame sprite. Would it be possible to give us some sample clothes to help with animation? Alternately, would you be willing to accept payment to put a specific outfit onto this base?

I'm not sure if you know what visual novels are? They're a whole game genre that's basically illustrated choose-your-own adventures. Some people like this, some people don't. You would probably do best avoiding games tagged "Visual Novel" (and/or described by their creators as visual novels) in the future.

This was amazing??? I've played it before, and this second playthrough holds up. I ended up accidentally romancing Myka on my last life, but it felt really correct even though I hadn't been doing it on purpose. I think my first time I went for Jo? I still want to go for Esteban and Suzette eventually, too (Gemma is great but has killed me like, a lot).

I'm curious, is there a MC/Jo/Suzette end? I noticed those characters can hang out as a trio an awful lot, but I've never managed to thread the needle on it.

Thank you for making this. I'm not entirely sure I understand the ending or even if the player is meant to have a concrete understanding of what comes next - hell, I'm not even sure if some of the characters being angels is meant to be taken literally or is meant to be taken as something that the unknown character at the start who may or may not have edited any of this might have changed in order to get at the emotional truth of something that can't quite hit right when expressed in plain words - but I really want to thank you for talking about care and obligation in a nuanced and humane way.

People can definitely burn themselves out trying to help others, especially when everyone involved is falling apart on the outskirts of a society that doesn't really care about them, but the strain of thought where you should cut people off when their problems are too difficult to deal with and they'll probably be okay anyway because something something professional help... it's ignorant, and it's cruel, and the people who say these things are often very quick to change their tune when they're the ones who want something. There's no easy solution to the cycle of caretaking and burnout among people who have very little to give but almost definitely won't be saved by anyone except each other, and I came away from this story thinking that maybe the more sympathetic characters could've made a few choices differently, but the reasons things ended this way had a lot more to do with who and what the rest of society values than with anything these characters did.

I don't know if that's what you wanted people to take away from this, but as someone who's been all three of the angel characters at different times to different people, it rang very true.

I love these and am probably going to use them for several things in the future.

Are you comfortable saying if you used AI to create these backgrounds? A jam I'm thinking about entering disallows AI-created assets (I don't agree with this, but it's not my jam) and I'm wondering if using the backgrounds from this set would be within the rules.

There are some free-to-use assets on this site where it isn't obvious whether or not the artist used AI. Are participants responsible for making sure any asset they use wasn't created with AI, or is the rule more about what participants create or commission for themselves than about what they come across in the wild?